Mar 3, 2014

In my previous post I touched on the origins of the first modern organization chart, and how today’s organizations can still learn from the principles behind a reorg that happened over 150 years ago. When we take a step back from the details and look at the story from a high level perspective, we see how a new technology, the telegraph in that case, introduced a paradigm shift in organizational design.

In order to effectively deal with what had been, essentially, the first appearance of big data (back in 1845!), the organization itself had to change the way it is organized and operates. Initially, forward thinking organizations like the New York and Erie Railroad seized this as an opportunity to grow and expand. Eventually, other companies would have to do a similar organizational changes in order to survive in the new information driven world.

In recent years we are witnessing significant changes in the way we work and communicate. There is a huge acceleration in technological innovation, which in turn leads to change in culture, work habits, legislation, as well as in individual and organizational behavior. Some of these changes represent revolutions that could, and possibly should, foundationally change the ways that organizations are structured and how information flows within them.

One challenge that managers and organizational development professionals face is recognizing which changes are passing fads, which are “more of the same”, and which changes actually warrant a paradigm shift in organizational design. A second challenge is timing - when should an organization make the change, since any significant change bears risks of its own.

I wanted to highlight several areas where technological advances and cultural change are already requiring organizations to adapt:

1) The sensitive aspects of Big Data

Big data is probably one of the most talked about trends in the business world, and so we will not dedicate too much time to it in the current discussion. Organizations are realizing the importance of collecting and mining the data that they have access to, and using it to make decisions across all levels of the organizations - from product decisions, to process optimizations and resource management, to HR and hiring practices, and more.

On the organizational level it has defined new roles such as the “Data Analyst” and an increasingly growing importance to the knowledge and information officers and the organizations they manage. While most of the big data trend has focused on extracting useful insights, there are several related aspects that are only now starting to come to the forefront. For example, there is a difference between data that is purely owned by the company, versus data that is owned by the company’s clients and partners.

In the past, the trend in big data was to save as much information as it possibly could, and then figure out what to do with it. But this can come at a great price. We have all read and seen the stories of companies and organizations being hacked and losing the data of millions of people (Yahoo, Target, and Kickstarter are just recent examples). Some of us were directly affected. Security and privacy leaks like this hurt the company both directly and indirectly, as well as hurt their customers and partners (banks now have to spend over $200M to reissue stolen credit cards due to that incident). The hack severely hurt Target’s customer trust and bottom line.

While many organizations already have security and privacy experts, not all of them have “baked” privacy, security, and legal considerations into their organizational fabric. As more organizations step into the world of big data, they also have the challenge of structuring themselves a way that these considerations are integrated into all phases of their product cycle and decision making. Part of the challenge is finding a way for these to be involved in a way that on one hand protects the organization, but on the other hand does not hinder innovation, or add excessive layers of bureaucracy, which in itself can hurt the organization’s culture. Getting it right might require new types of organizations and organizational flows that are different enough to warrant a paradigm shift.

2) Diffusion of organizational boundaries

Traditionally, organizational boundaries have been much clearer than they are today - you were either an employee and part of the organization, or you were not. There are two interesting trends that are contributing to the diffusion of the organizational boundaries: outsourcing and crowdsourcing.

In the past, organizations were self contained in the sense that the work was usually done in-house by the company’s employees, usually at the same physical environment. Today, many companies use outsourcing parts of their business and delegate work to other places where labor is cheaper or more experienced. Some tech startups entire engineering force is outsourced, while other companies outsource other services.

Crowdsourcing is an even more intriguing trend where internal tasks are given to the general public through match-making or competitive platforms. For example, Kaggle turns data analysis problems into competitions for data scientists. Topcoder similarly conducts competitions on more general programming problems, and Innocentive generalizes this approach to additional research and development areas like life sciences, chemistry, and more. Other companies rely on the general public as their PR/Marketing outreach with viral marketing campaigns, and so on.

Finally, another type of crowdsourcing is the open source movement. Increasingly, organizations put out open source projects that contribute to an external community of developers, but also return the company different benefits, like crowd-sourced bug detection and fixes. This also helps with training potential future employees in the tools and technologies that the company utilizes.

The contracting organization needs to define legal and contractual boundaries, with non disclosure clauses and the likes. However, there are additional considerations. In a way, the organization’s boundary is now much more fuzzy, or fluid. In some senses the organization is making the external companies or individuals part of their processes and flows. In other ways, it has very little influence or even visibility into what is happening outside its boundaries. How much does the organization know about the culture of an outsourcing firm, their internal values and processes? Is there anything they can do about the employee churn rate of contractor employees, or knowledge transfer for long term projects?

A way that organizations today resolve these challenges is to eventually attempt to hire successful contractors and contributors, and make them part of the traditional organization. However, a more exciting challenge might be to rethink the definition of the organization under the reality of diffused boundaries. How to manage long term relationships of this type, how to integrate them with the organizational processes and culture in ways that make sense. How to leverage the benefits of outsourcing and crowdsourcing, while also benefiting from the advantages of an explicit organization.

3) The way we communicate

Communication technologies are changing the way we interact at work, and also the ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ of the way we work.

Today we use social communication tools much more than in the past. Many companies provide their employees with internal social tools that in a way, flattens the organizational hierarchies. Every employee is “approachable” via that medium - via email directories, organizational groups and knowledge wikis, shared calendar systems, and more. Employees can easily contact the executives and vice versa without the need to schedule a formal meeting in a tight schedule, and without the need to “run into someone” at the hallway, which was the traditional way to interact with someone informally.

This direct accessibility is coupled with the fact that everyone can be reached at all times (24/7) due to the always-connected laptops, tablets and mobile phones, coupled with a an increasing acceptance of people being available during evenings, weekends, and even vacations (which has many drawbacks but is not part of our current topic).

Adding to that is the “flattening of the world” which allows companies to spread their offices across the globe in a very efficient way. For example, these allow a company to provide cost-effective 24/7 customer support by transitioning to different call centers around the world, each of them operating in the regular work hours of its time-zone. It also allows very small companies and startups to be distributed across locations and countries, something that only large corporations were able to do in the past.

These are just few examples of how today’s communication tools and norms are changing the flows of information within organizations. However, most organizations have not changed their organizational designs to match. How does the concept of a manager adapt to a reality where all employees are connected? What do team boundaries mean? How should processes be established in an organization that is constantly operating across many time-zones, how does one define a shift, or an end-of-day review? If we re-designed organizations from the ground up under today’s conditions - would they still look and operate as they do today, or will they be better served by different constructs?

These are just three areas that could lead to organizational restructure and change. They represent technological advances and behavior changes that are happening around us every day. Many times these changes creep slowly, first as some disruptive technology or behavior, and then one day you realize that everyone is doing it. It is sometime a good exercise to think whether our current organizational structures and practices still serve us well, or should we take a step back and update them. Innovative organizations will seize the opportunity to adapt and grow, and later set the pace for the rest of their industry.

What do you think? Could these areas lead to paradigm shift in organizational design? Are there other areas that would change the way organizations work in the future? What organizations and companies are forward thinkers in terms of their organizational change? What changes are they already implementing?

Feb 18, 2014

Mckinsey Quarterly published an articleby history professor Caitlin Rosenthal about the first modern organization chart, and included visuals of the authentic drawings made by Daniel C. McCallum in 1845. McCallum was in charge of the operations in the New York and Erie Railroad, one of the world’s longest rail systems.

While increasing use of the telegraph gave the organization enormous amounts of data, it also added complexity and information overload to the railroad’s operation. There was a need to improve the processes for organizing the newly available operational information, and for acting on it in a timely manner. McCallum crafted a new design for the organization’s structure that reflected his approach to how operations should function. This is considered one of the first data driven organizations, and the beautiful graphics that documents his organizational plan is considered one of the first modern organization charts.

A few things that caught my eye in the article and McCallum’s work(I do recommend reading the full article):

The drawing was inspired by nature, and shaped in the form of a tree: The roots represented the board of directors and the trunk represented McCallum and his chief officers. The five railroad tracks and the personnel operating them were the tree’s branches and leaves. As the author points out, this illustration is very different than today’s static hierarchical pyramids that we are all familiar with. The tree metaphor might lend the chart an artistic and archaic look, however the actual principals it depicts are actually pretty familiar in modern, data driven organizations.

McCallum’s depiction of the organizational pyramid is inverted from what we see in most organization charts: Rather than being a top-down illustration, it is a bottom-up depiction. This is not just for aesthetics - it also means something about the responsibility given to the branches and their personnel. Authority was given to the people who worked at the lines themselves - they possessed the knowledge which was critical to the operations and could use information in real time. Decisions didn’t have to go all the way up to top-leadership (or down, to the trunk and roots, if we go with McCallum’s take). Loops could be closed fast, giving the right people down the line “ownership” of their domain - which is a also modern management approach. The article refers to McCallums approach as a reversal of hierarchy, an interesting concept to consider in modern organizations as well.

In the tree-like organization chart the trunk and roots of the chief officers and the board still matter greatly, as they do in a real tree. They give a foundation and stability with their experience, strategy, and direction - but they do not need to approve the time-critical operational decisions. Together with the decentralization of decision making, McCallum insisted that targeted metrics will be reported to the board of directors. This allowed the board, with its finite capacity, to receive relevant and actionable data. This was supported graphically as information flew through the branches to the bark and reached the roots.

In the case of the New York and Erie Railroad, the novel information technology (the telegraph) allowed for new capabilities and opportunities of increasing the scale of the organization in ways which were not possible before. However, in order to effectively seize this opportunity, the organization itself had to change. And not just that organization, all organizations would have to eventually change in order to effectively deal with the paradigm shift that information technology brought forth.

Nowadays there seem to be numerous changes in the way we work and communicate. There is a great boom of technological innovation, which in turn leads to change in culture, work habits, legislation, as well as in individual and organizational behavior. Like the introduction of the telegraph, some of these changes represent revolutions that could, and possibly should, foundationally change the ways that organizations are structured and how information flows within them. Examining some of these and the reasons why they might lead to paradigm shifts in organizations will be the topic of my next post.

Feb 4, 2014

“A toxic leader is a person who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse-off condition than when s/he first found them.“ (Source: Wikipedia)

A recentNPR segment focused on the topic of toxic leadership in the US army. The story described research done by David Matsuda, an anthropology professor who tried to understand the high rate of suicide among US soldiers while he was researching local cultures. There were several interesting aspects to this story:

The military is an organization where an extreme hierarchical structure and the uncompromising result-oriented goals (to be achieved at any price) may result in life & death consequences. We can think of it as an extreme indicator of behaviors in other organizations that are not as strict, in which toxic leadership might be harder to spot.

The complete effect of toxic leaders on their subordinates and teams is not always fully recognized. It is not always as high profile as suicide, but a continuous degradation in individual and team performance. As mentioned in the story by a lieutenant general at the joint forces - wherever there were toxic leaders, no one would take prudent risk, be innovative, or act creatively.

The fact that it took an outsider (an anthropology professor, not a soldier) to ask the right questions that would get to the root-cause and reveal a large scale phenomena, one in which toxic commanders abused soldiers who ended up committing suicide

As suggested in the piece, toxic leadership exists in other organizations as well: “The problem of toxic leadership is not confined to the military. It will be a cancer in any social organization that lacks the mechanisms for controlling it.“

In most cases of toxic leadership found in civilian and corporate organizations, it “only” causes people to be miserable, abused, or to simply leave their job and find a new company to work for. Toxic leadership may be challenging to trace or distinguish from other issues, but has a tremendous effect on how teams and whole companies operate, as well as how challenges are faced and goals achieved. It can lead to undesired attrition of good people while the bad apples remain in place and continue spoiling the bunch.

Why is it so tricky to identify toxic leaders?

Today’s fast paced challenges call for super-performance. As a result, people tend to focus on the results and deliverables, and not pay enough attention to the method or the way things get done. Additionally, in the corporate world, the effects of a toxic leader are harder to detect, and symptoms might be attributed to other issues or go unnoticed. Companies should invest in establishing processes that first identify, and then keep toxic leaders at bay.

Assessments: One of the solutions to identify toxic leaders in the army was to add subordinate evaluations when deciding whether to promote a commander or not. Toxic leaders can behave in a certain way to their commanders and in a different way to their subordinates. In order to assess behavior in a complete manner, the organization should consider all aspects of the work the person is doing as well the feedback of the people who manage, report to, and interact with the individual. This is already a part of many if not most companies’ assessment processes (usually called 360-degree assessments). If your organization is still not not doing this, here’s another reason to start.

Another issue that could lead to toxic leaders going undetected arises when top-leadership that is disconnected from the day-to-day operations. Wise senior leaders understand the importance of staying connected to the people who work at their organizations, and not just to their direct reports. They make an effort to “show their face” around the company, and create opportunities for any employee to interact with them. Employees would hopefully get the message that they can access top leaders whenever is needed.

Finally, not all organization pay attention to creating and promoting a culture with open communication channels all around. Companies need to nurture a culture where any member is able, even expected, to express their opinions and raise concerns across multiple forums and channels. These can include traditional approaches like town-halls, surveys, or discussion forums.

It is important to keep the concept of toxic leadership in mind as we set out to observe and analyze an organization and the social dynamics within it. Thankfully, many of the activities that are important for recognizing the presence of toxic leaders are also good practices in the organization for other reasons as well.

Jan 22, 2014

When organizations make a
decision to reorganize or restructure the way they work, it usually starts with
strategic organizational goals: Improving flow of information, adapting to a
changing marketplace, change in organizational priorities, and so on. Most of
the thinking tends to be around organizational units of like teams or
departments, and how they connect and relate to one another.

When it
comes to the individuals - Organizations tend to put a lot of attention on the
top leadership and management level. However, a lot of the energy related to
most other employees is directed toward more bureaucratic and mundane tasks
like headcount calculations, or who would report to whom in which team. In many
cases, companies neglect to invest enough energy (if at all) in the thing that
makes everything tick - THE PEOPLE.

M. C. Escher, Sky & Water I, woodcut, 1938

Ideally, the organization should make the effort to engage every single one of
its members, and involve them before, during, and after the process. At the
minimum - get their thoughts and feedback at the end of the process so you know
where they stand. However, there are not always sufficient resources or time
for this. In this these cases, it is important to prioritize who to talk to,
and when. Even when you do have resources to involve everyone, the order of
engaging the organization's members might matter. Specifically, there are two
tiers that leadership and change-drivers should consider and address:

1) The future leaders Leadership has usually already identified those individuals who
would assume key roles in the future, at both team and organizational levels.
Companies usually spend significant resources to find and nurture its future
leaders for the near term as well as for medium and longer terms. Organizations
make efforts to ensure sure these people are happy and will remain in the
company. In times of organizational changes, the importance of communicating
the process and status to the future leaders might sometime be overlooked due
to the chaos of change.

Such periods of organizational change could be confusing times for
everyone, and key people might not feel secure enough. They might start looking
for alternative roles that seem more stable. It is critical to keep lines of
communication open and give sufficient attention to those individuals.
Especially in times of organizational challenge and instability, companies need
to address the tier of future leadership. Make sure they understand what is
going on, and why. What the goals of the specific change are. The drivers of
change and organizational leaders would be wise to reassure the future leaders.
It is good to listen to their thoughts and goals. It is especially important
listen and respond to their concerns, before they turn into fears. 2) The social hubsEvery network of people is characterized by a few central people,
not necessarily in terms of their role but in the sense of the way that they
are perceived by others. These are the people who are well connected with
others within the organization. They are the ones that everyone goes to for
advice, or to chat with when there's gossip, because they always know first
when things are happening. Office admins could be an example for people who are
well networked across the organization, and know what's happening above as well
as underneath the surface.

These central people are crucial in situations of change, as they
basically control the tone of information that flows informally within the
organization. It could be wise to identify those social hubs, and popular/vocal
members of the organization, and bring those central people on board. It could
even be as simple as communicating the current process and the rationale behind
it to them. Making them involved partners could help spread the right message
across the organization. Even when the plan is to talk with every employee in
person, this process takes time. Starting with those central employees could
help spread the positive change throughout the organization until the
individual conversations are complete.

Planning
the communication messaging as well as the order in which to communicate organizational
changes is an important component of the change management strategy. This grows
in importance for larger organizations or more radical changes. It is
especially important for change processes that cannot be accomplished swiftly
but stretch over a period of time - like the merging of business units or
acquisition related integrations.

Formal
channels and hierarchies of communications are not enough - we also have to
consider the informal and interpersonal channels of communication that might affect
the organization just as much as the formal channels, if not
more. Successful implementation of the internal communication strategy can
help mitigate risks, reduce fears and resistance, and increase confidence in
the organization and its leaders.

Mar 10, 2012

It is always reassuring to read about research that supports your gut feeling, or actually gives reasoning to the gut feeling itself. In the post "Are Emotions Prophetic?" Lehrer explains why it is reasonable to trust feelings. He raises the question whether our "unconscious is better suited for difficult cognitive tasks than the conscious brain". He mentions "The emotional oracle effect" (defined at the lab of Michael Pham at Columbia Business School). What I like the most, is how he describes emotions as a “privileged window” into the subterranean mind.

Feb 4, 2012

Another interesting post by Jonah Lehrer's, as always filled with fascinating references. This time he writes about identifing good ideas. My favorite quote, remindes me of architecture school when I was pondering on how to know whether someone is a real artist.

This is Nietzsche's take on this:

"Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration … shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…. All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering."

Jan 29, 2012

It is pretty surprising to see all those buzz words from biz-school which I used to make fun of seems IN PLACE when it comes from Shelly Lazarus. Biz-buzz-words aside, there are some pearls in this FORBS post: I love the definition "de-risk your decisions" I have been doing it for all my life, and never had a name for it. She also talks about authentnicity and passion which are two things that I really feel can change the world. it's worth reading:

Jan 24, 2012

Tony Schwartz writes at the HBR blog about appreciation at the work place and on how hold your value. He proposes practical steps on how to achieve this:
1. Influence others to become better (instead of thinking of how to change others).
2. Practice appreciation on yourself.
3. Make it a priority to notice what others are doing right.
4. Notice what you value, and focus on that.

Dec 30, 2011

An article by Adam Dachis has a few interesting points about body language.

It includes some ideas on the way that we carry ourselves and the way it is interpreted by others. There is a lot of research (and also a consulting company, Sociometric Solutions, that I happen to work for :)) that leverage technology in order to learn from human gestures and its interpretation. When discussing body language, it is very important to be aware of cultural differences that effect the way that we perceive behavior. For example, some gestures could be considered insulting in certain cultures and not significant at all in other cultures.

I apologize if the image offends anyone

Here are a few ideas and a few quotes from the article. I will include a link to the full article at the end of this post

"We lie a lot" (House says it better) If you believe this, you will find it helpful to know a thing or two about body signals.

Eye contact is good!

Intuition. In contrast to what the article suggests, I think that our intuition is something we can improve and develop so that it can assist us in estimating situations.

"Some people are just awkward" Remember to take all the "How to..." guides with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to describing or deciphering people's intentions. Every human being is different, it is really difficult to generalize and to expect it to fit accurately to everyone.

"We tend to mimic the behavior of others to some extent" I admit that I usually get uncomfortable when people talk about mimicry. I do believe however, that we have some influence on the person we are interacting with. We can send "vibes" that can catch on to the other person and somewhat effect the interaction

Nov 30, 2011

Déjà vu — looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like you've seen it before.

Vuja dé—looking at a familiar situation (a field you've worked in for decades, products you've worked on for years) as if you've never seen it before, and, with that fresh line of sight, developing a distinctive point of view on the future.

Bill Taylor distinguishes between these two expressions in his HBR post and raises an interesting question: "How do you look at your organization and your field as if you are seeing them for the first time?"

Oct 31, 2011

According to a UN estimation, the world's population will pass the 7 billion mark on Monday. 7 billion is a number that is hard to perceive, It raises questions: How does this number spread among the countries? How is population growth today different than the way it used to be in the past?

It is interesting to see information (that is usually presented with dry numbers) presented in a different way. A beautiful visualization for the population growth by NPR:

Oct 27, 2011

I am always fascinated with brain processes that are mysterious (or at least unknown to me) and their affect on our behavior. According to yet another brilliant article by Jonah Lehrer from WIERED (oh yeah, I am definitely becoming a groupie), it is OK to just let the mind wander.
Furthermore, Not only that it is NOT unproductive, it actually makes us be MORE CREATIVE!

Fun fact: Did you know that the brain consumes more energy during daydreaming than it does during periods in which we are focused?!

This image is a detail taken from a beautiful Mercedes Benz add: called "Left Brain Right Brain"

A research from Schooler lab, mentioned in the article, demonstrated that "people who consistently engage in more mind-wandering [...] score significantly higher on various measures of creativity".

Before you start gazing at the screen and let your mind wander, you should know that there are different types of mind-wandering, and not in all of them patients exhibited increased creativity (you'll have to read the article to know the distinction ). Click HERE to link to the full article.

Oct 9, 2011

Do you hate to be wrong? What is your reaction when you make a mistake?

According to a new paper by Moser at Michigan State University there are two distinct mindsets: a fixed one and a growth one. Having one or the other has an impact on our ability to learn from our mistakes and to improve our performances.

This interesting article by Jonah Lehrer touches on the difference between feedback that is given on effort versus feedback that is granted for intelligence. Apparently there is a different impact based on the subject of feedback (praise on effort or praise on intelligence as part of an experiment done with children by Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford).

Aug 27, 2011

Jokes aside, as a person who consumes a lot of coffee, I have to admit that for me coffee is not a beverage to have on my own by the computer. It is an opportunity for a social encounter. I try to have my coffee breaks with other people. The coffee talk is a time to catch up on work AND non-work-related issues with my peers and friends.

There is research that shows that social-breaks boost productivity, and that the caffeine increases creativity. I am definitely addicted, not sure whether it is to the caffeine or to the social interactions. Whatever it is, it gives me a boost.

Jul 17, 2011

It made me raise my head up and look at the sticky note that's always hanging on the wall in front of me and says: "Questions everything". It's exhausting to actually do this, I have to admit, but I think it is worth it.

My sticky note ^

Regarding principle #6, just earlier today I was talking about the feeling of satisfaction in finding out that you can do with little and be happy. It is truly rewarding just to see that you can - try it out.

Last comment is on principle #9: It helps to get feedback from people around you, since there are many things that we are not noticing about ourselves and the way we behave. We have more chance to change/improve if we are made aware of things...

Jun 13, 2011

This wonderful 15 minute talk touches on issues that have been occupying my mind for some time: what is success? Are the goals that motivate us are truly ours? Can we really avoid prior assumptions? Alain De Botton examines ideas of success and failure (via swissmiss and Brain pickings).

De Botton mentions a scenario in which we strive to a certain measure of success only to find out (in some cases) that it is not "our success" but a success measure defined by someone else (by our mother, significant others, trends etc.) This could lead to frustration.

The way I look at it, as we are social creatures, by definition we are affected by others: we learn, improve, and also generate ideas and thoughts as a result of our interactions with other individuals in our environment. However, many times, without noticing it, people simply repeat what they heard by others without necessarily filtering it, or providing an original line of thought.

In my opinion, the best way for us to make sure the goals/thoughts/ideas we have are really ours and not a repetition of others is to metaphorically melt the ready-made input that we received by others, break it up, look at it in a critical way, and then reconstruct it to fit us - pick and chose the concepts that fit our "truth" and synthesize it with our perspective and original ideas. It will ensure that what we are striving for, the success that we believe in, is ours and not just a reflection of others. It is difficult but crucial to generate an individual voice, needs, desires and beliefs in order to make sure that we really OWN our thoughts. If after the reconstruction we end up with the same idea as the one we started with - it means we actually believe in it!